Earlier this year, ELLINT Next published its Pay Transparency Handbook 2025, covering how 13 European jurisdictions are approaching the transposition of EU Directive 2023/970 regarding pay transparency.
If you missed it, you can find it here – and if you did read it, good news: it’s already time for an update.
A quick recap
The EU Pay Transparency Directive must be transposed by 6 June 2026. Its goal: close the gender pay gap through greater transparency in hiring, pay reporting, and employee rights.
France was already ahead with its existing “Index de l’égalité professionnelle” – but the Directive has raised the bar.
What’s new
On 6 March 2026, the French government shared a first draft of the bill with the unions in view of their consultation.
First news: France will miss the June 2026 deadline, with most measures not taking effect before mid-2027. It won’t be alone in that club as many member states have made it an aspirational exercise not to transpose EU directives on time.
As we had anticipated in our earlier handbook, the draft of the bill is not very original and covers:
- A new pay reporting index with 7 indicators (up from 6), including a new breakdown of pay gaps by category of employees doing equivalent work (applicable to companies with 50+ employees),
- Differentiated obligations depending on company size when a pay gap is identified:
- For companies with 50 to 99 employees, things are kept relatively light: if a gap above the 5% threshold is found, the employer must address it through professional equality negotiations or produce an action plan.
- For companies with 100+ employees, the CSE or trade union delegates can request detailed explanations on the indicators. If a gap above 5% cannot be objectively justified, the employer has six months to correct it by collective agreement or unilateral decision. If the gap is still unjustified after those six months, a formal joint assessment with employee representatives kicks in.
- A redefined notion of “work of equal value” that now explicitly incorporates non-technical skills and working conditions, which is a meaningful shift. The categorization of employees performing work of equal value must be established by collective agreement, with a unilateral employer decision as a last resort.
- A right for employees to request their own pay level and gender-based averages for comparable roles, with a two-month response deadline for employers (who must also remind employees of this right every year),
- An obligation to include a salary range in job postings – in practice vague formulas like “salary based on profile” will be banned, and asking candidates about their pay history will be explicitly prohibited,
- A reinforced burden of proof: if an employer hasn’t met its transparency obligations, the full burden of proving the absence of discrimination falls on them,
- Penalties of up to 1% of total payroll for reporting breaches, and up to €450 for individual information failures (with doubling mechanisms for repeat offenders).
What does this mean practically
While the delay may feel like good news, don’t be too relaxed about it. Restructuring pay categories, identifying and documenting gaps, updating job offer templates and HR processes take more time than expected.
Branch-level collective bargaining on pay categorization should ideally be concluded by end of 2026, so that clock is already ticking.
The steps outlined in our Handbook are a good place to start: audit your pay structures, review job classifications, train your HR teams, and get the job offer templates in order. Winter is coming!
